When the Only Thing You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail

Well, I finished up The World is Flat this evening, and I have to say, the book is probably worth your time. You might wonder who that "you" I'm speaking to is, but in this case, it's anyone who might stumble across this blog.


If you are already in the habit of reading blogs, you are already participating in Friedman's basic premise in the book that the world is going through a period of rapid growth and transition through the technological innovations of the Internet, broadband connectivity, and work-flow software. That list of three items might not be the sexiest list you have ever come across, but I guarantee that it has, does, and will continue to profoundly affect the way that we live in the future.

For those reasons alone, I think the book is worth everyone's time. Those items are not the only ones that are causing our world to change in profound ways, but they are some of the leading culprits. Also, no, I'm not getting a cut of Tom's profits, so don't look for ulterior motives in my effusive gushing on the book. Go pick it up and thank me later.


In the sports world, the Sports Guy had a pretty good piece today on the hoopla surrounding Mark McGwire's disputed candidacy for the Baseball Hall of Fame. As a baseball fan who is sometimes given to idealistic ramblings on the greater meanings behind America's pasttime, Big Mac's HOF candidacy is a topic that I cannot ignore for long. We all know McGwire's story: a power-hitting first baseman from his entry into the league, he suddenly ballooned into a larger-than-life baseball mashing behemoth in the mid-90's and eventually toppled one of the most hallowed marks in the American sports landscape.


After Jose Canseco decided to make a buffoon-like attempt to throw the rest of the baseball world under the bus with allegations of rampant steroid use, McGwire appeared before a Congressional Committee to talk about his alleged steroid use. Here's the problem: He didn't talk. McGwire's famous remark that "he was not there to talk about the past" cast an enormous shadow of doubt over his career.


Now, as McGwire stands in the dock of one of the most secretive and arbitrary practices in the sports world, Hall of Fame voting, the Baseball Writers of America have their opportunity to cast the proverbial thumbs up or thumbs down in Big Mac's direction. Barring a minor miracle, McGwire will be left standing in the cold as his contemporaries file past him into Cooperstown's hallowed real estate and to many baseball fans that seems right.


You see, baseball fans are often incredibly idealistic, romantic, and tortured people. We like to think that baseball is the one major American sport that somehow captures this romantic vision of what we once were and a lot of the things that we have lost. You never hear people speak in reverential tones about football movies, but you can reduce grown men to tears by simply bringing up the scene in Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner and his dad play catch.


Out of the three major American sports (sorry hockey), I think that basketball is the sport that is the most honest with itself. Football is probably the sport that most closely reflects where America is today and where it is headed. Baseball always seems to be reaching back towards the past to recapture something that probably was not as great as historians make it out to be. I'm not sure which one of those visions appeal to you if any of them do.


Maybe I have it all wrong, but I do know this, if there is one sport that will keep a player out of its Hall of Fame purely for idealistic notions about the integrity of the game and playing the right way, it is baseball. For better or worse, that is America's pasttime.